BOTANICAL GHOSTS

Botanical Ghosts traces the transatlantic voyage of the ackee tree (Blighia Sapida), and its encounter with British botanist Dorothy Popenoe at Lancetilla Botanical Experimental Station. The project looks at histories of botanical representation, plant transportation, and their relationship to the legacies of colonial resource extraction in Honduras.

The film follows a fictional  exchange between Dorothy, the ackee fruit and the artist, as they pull on a thread that unravels the historical forces behind various encounters at Lancetilla. The Archive is a collection of letters, documents and images compiled over a period of 2 years that build on the timeline of Botanical Ghosts.

To see a web demo of the previous Botanical Ghosts site please click here. 




This project was funded with the generous support of the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative, the Council of the Arts at MIT, the program in Art, Culture and Technology and the Harvard Film Studies Center. Branding and web design of the archive by Sophie Loloi